Pundits speculating about the design commission for the Obama library
need to broaden their perspectives.

The official process to build the Barack Obama Presidential Library has finally been launched. After years of gossip and rumors about architects and sites, this could be the moment for some intelligent and informed debate among the design community. Unfortunately, the conversation so far has been dominated by narrow prescriptions about what the library should be, who should design it, and where it should be located, as opposed to broader speculation about what it could be. So I propose that, rather than making prescriptions to the president based on a narrow set of perceived realities, we can help him by expanding the conversation and laying out a broader set of possibilities.

This will be the 14th official presidential library under the jurisdiction of the National Archives. If it’s built in Chicago, then the design standards for the Obama library will be set extremely high, given our city’s status as a world capital of modern architecture. (Full disclosure: I live and practice in Chicago.) Without exaggeration, the library could be one of the most important American building projects in the decades to come. On the other hand, the potential for disappointment is also real, given the anticipation already in the air. Of the 13 existing presidential libraries, most are unremarkable in terms of either design or urban impact. The Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, is one of the few exceptions. The campus, designed by Polshek Partnership and Hargreaves Associates, formed a new connection between downtown and North Little Rock, and is credited with catalyzing substantial development in the area. The other presidential libraries, however, are in locations either too remote or too sequestered to be much more than storehouses and monuments. So, Chicago represents an unprecedented opportunity to break the pattern of what the historian Benjamin Hufbauer has called “Presidential Temples,” and set a new standard.

The Clinton Presidential Center, in Little Rock, Arkansas, designed by Polshek Partnership and Hargreaves Associates

Courtesy Timothy Hursley

Before looking at the project itself, let’s first address some gossip about the commission. The Tanzanian-born, British architect David Adjaye has been mentioned as the “front runner” for the Obama library on several occasions over the past few years. The most conspicuous case was Fred A. Bernstein’s March 2013 article in Architectural Record, which lacked any real substantiation and was publicly refuted by Adjaye himself. Robert A. M. Stern (designer of the George W. Bush Presidential Center), Witold Rybczynski (member of the George W. Bush Presidential Library design committee), and others have also been spreading the same seemingly benign rumor. No disrespect goes to Mr. Adjaye, who is arguably the most notable architect of African descent on the current global scene, but the implications stemming from these rumors are more than a little disturbing. The most obviously questionable implication is that President Obama should or must choose a black architect for the library. (Full disclosure: I’m black.) But even worse, perhaps, is the implication that follows on from the first: Without exception, the other presidential library commissions have all been given to American architects. Therefore, those who suggest that the president should choose a foreign-born architect of African descent are actually implying that there is not a single African American architect who is qualified, or even deserving to be considered, for the job. To be clear, none of the aforementioned individuals have openly made such statements, but their eagerness to grant the commission to Adjaye leads very quickly to such conclusions.

The George Bush Presidential Library, in College Station, Texas, designed by HOK.

Courtesy Erhard Pfeiffer

Nonetheless, the commission is an interesting issue for debate. Rather than narrowing the president’s choices based on race, what if the field of candidates could be expanded? How appropriate would it be for one of our youngest presidents to consider some youthful, lesser-known, yet extremely talented designers for the library? If President Obama began leading the country at 47, then certainly there are designers of similar age, or even younger, who could deliver a great project. Like Obama’s rapid rise to leadership, this could be a rare opportunity to usher some new (and perhaps also more diverse) faces onto the national architectural stage. I. M. Pei, for example, was also only 47 years old when first selected to design one of his first major projects: the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.

If it were left up to some, there might be no Obama library at all. Rybczynski encouraged President Obama to “go small” or perhaps forgo a library altogether in an opinion piece for the New York Times. While his critique of the increasingly monumental scale of the libraries is understandable, Rybczynski’s suggestion that our first African American president would not have a library is both politically suspect and terribly implausible. The federal law mandating the libraries’ construction has specific requirements for their relative capacities, and the magnitude of these facilities has been expanding rapidly in the digital era. And if the Obama library is well sited in Chicago, the third-largest city in the United States, it could break attendance records for the presidential libraries by several magnitudes, thus also requiring a larger scale.

Marshall Brown associates me with views I have never espoused. Last year, I reported for Architectural Record that David Adjaye was seen as the front-runner to design Barack Obama’s presidential library. Factors included Adjaye’s friendship with Obama -- the architect was seated at the president’s small table at a state dinner -- and the fact that Adjaye has made a specialty of designing libraries, including two close to the White House. I do not endorse the choice of Adjaye or any other architect, or believe that the president should choose an architect of any particular race or ethnicity. I am, however, on record as saying that the profession would benefit from greater diversity.

Fred Bernstein

May 7, 2014 03:47 pm

Posted by
will regrets

What is the point of an article of this nature?Architecture has always been and always will be a game played by conservatives. The short sightedness of Marshall Brown is painfully evident in his tiny argument for the Obama Presidential Library to act as a new opportunity for young architectural design talent. This is obvious because Marshall Brown thinks that Obama is a new type of American president, and therefore will result in new type of presidential library. Obama is identical to all other American presidents based on gender. Not once does Marshall Brown suggest that because Chicago is the likely site for the Obama library that a female architect should be chosen for the project. Jeanne Gang and her Chicago based practice Studio Gang would be an alternative choice for this presidential library. Jeanne Gang is an Illinois native and the architect of the Aqua Tower in Chicago, the tallest building in the world by a female architect.To project forward beyond the Obama presidential library and the small voice of a Chicago school architecture professor, the point of this article could have drawn parallels between the much needed gender equality in architecture and the politics of the United States acting as a new precedent for architects & citizens alike. Until a female is president of the United States an article of this type is totally irrelevant, except to its author.

(By the way, a female architect has never been considered to design a U.S. Presidential Library. )

will regrets.

May 7, 2014 06:16 pm

Posted by
gray85

So true Fred, how many black women architects are available? A sorry state of affairs for a profession floundering to find significance.

Jul 1, 2014 11:33 am

Posted by
tierneytoo

Previous comments have missed the central point of the essay, one in which the traditional hermetic monument is contrasted with a more extensive urban intervention. I found the conclusion particularly inspiring because it sets up the possibility for a reconceptualization of Chicago as a field condition – merging landscape and urbanism, object and process. If as Stan Allen argued, a field condition marks a move away from traditional concepts of architectural form and toward a consideration of systems and networks, then the presidential archive could be distributed throughout the city as an array of points accumulating into a connective system. By dismantling and reframing program, unlike an isolated monument, a distributed archive could become a dynamic, flexible armature with catalytic possibilities.

The process of enabling fields and/or frameworks might reveal formations, such as determining points or nodes of the system – which to me, is one of the more interesting discussions concerning the Presidential Library. An obvious choice would be to distribute the archive among already existing knowledge sites in Chicago – the colleges and universities. But would that not merely reinforce already inequalities? Should not our goal be to connect the city and to dissolve barriers? Perhaps there are more subtle histories or aspects that could tell another story about human self-determination. Where are the structures and places in Chicago that furthered human dignity? How could we connect them towards a greater understanding? And as Marshall Brown emphasized – the connectors could lead to new ways of activating the spaces in between, socially and experientially.

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